


you talk like Marlene Dietrich

by secondaudrina (firstaudrina)



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: F/M, Movie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:20:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/secondaudrina
Summary: She never did like hotels.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf
Kudos: 20





	you talk like Marlene Dietrich

**Author's Note:**

> Shamelessly ripped off _Hotel Chevalier_ — setting, script, and all. Canon doesn't matter. For T.

Blair has been living at the hotel for four months. She never did like hotels.

The mirrored vanity holds her mirrored makeup tray. Carefully lined up within it are her Chanel and Dior and Yves Saint Laurent: Vitalumière and corresponding powder compact, three blushers, translucent powder, finishing spray, one lonely bronzer barely indented. The bottom drawer of her matching mirrored jewelry box holds eight lipsticks side-by-side. _Coquette_ is the one most commonly used. There are two eyeshadow palettes, for efficiency, stacked to the side and beside them three pairs of false lashes of varying thickness, two mascaras (one for volume, one for length). Beside them, four nail polishes in a neat line (as of now, she's wearing _rose paradise_ ).

Her shoes are mostly in boxes arranged in the wardrobe. All of her clothes are in garment bags for easy transport. Books are in her suitcase. Only reluctantly unpacked are her toiletries, though those are easily stowed away. Everything Blair has she bought here in Paris; nothing has come from New York except her passport and herself.

It's late, blue-dark outside her curtains. That night she'd had dinner with a pack of American wives on holiday and now she is exhausted. Blair lost her taste for Paris five years and one husband ago.

She changes out of her cocktail dress into navy silk pajamas with white-lined hems and nests into her down comforter with a box of macarons at her side and her laptop playing _Une Femme est Une Femme_.

The phone rings.

Blair pauses the film and, irritated, answers with a brisk, "Oui?"

A male voice, warm and low, "Hey." She says nothing. A moment later, again, "Hello?"

"Hello," she echoes stiffly. "Why are you calling me?"

"I'd imagine," he says, sounding amused, "it's because I want to talk to you."

She says nothing.

"To see you," he amends.

She says nothing.

"I'm at the station," he says. "I can be there in half an hour."

"Here?" she repeats.

"Do you mind?"

"You know I mind," Blair says. Then, "How did you know where I was?"

"Serena. I'm gonna catch a cab."

"Don't," she starts.

"I'll see you," he says. The line clicks off.

Blair looks at the receiver for a moment before slamming it down. Then she's up in a flurry, smoothing down the duvet and jamming the uneaten macarons into a drawer.

She must appear interrupted but not too interrupted.

She gives her face a quick wash and reapplies her makeup, a smooth pale complexion and a slightly-too-heavy line of eyeliner because her hands shakes on her left eye and they have to look even. There isn't time to start over. She considers blue eyeshadow. There really isn't time.

She doesn't put on lipstick. She doesn't want to look like she's inviting anything. She studies her reflection impassively. She puts on lipstick.

She pulls the scarf from her hair and her curls fall messily around her shoulders, still stiff with hairspray in some places. She really should have it deep conditioned later, perhaps at the hotel salon; the ends are dry.

She moves to put it in a bun before remembering that he likes it loose, mussed. Then she does put it in a bun, high on her head like a ballerina. She runs a comb through her fringe impatiently until it lies right, just this side of windswept.

She considers putting her dress from dinner back on, a stiff silver brocade, but doesn't. Instead she chooses a tea-length black dress that swishes around her bare legs and buttons high up on her neck. She can hear him calling it one of her pilgrim funeral dresses. She holds a pair of nude nylons in her hands, considering.

The phone rings.

Blair puts the stockings away.

"Yes," she says into the receiver, French forgotten. "Send him up."

She checks the clock at least fifteen times before his knock finally sounds, tentative and then insistent. Blair waits another five minutes before opening the door. "What are you doing here?"

Dan is wearing a red flannel shirt buttoned up to his throat and a black slim-fitting blazer, duffel bag in his hand. His cheeks are a little red. She wonders if it's cold outside. It wasn't earlier.

"Didn't we have this conversation on the phone?"

"No," Blair says, but he's already moving past her.

Blair watches, arms stiff at her sides, as he drops his bag and looks around her room. He shifts the curtains aside to peer out the window. He runs his fingers over the edge of her makeup tray. He flips through the book on her bedside table, finding the place she'd bookmarked and reading a few paragraphs before setting it back down. Her iPod rests in its player beside the book; Dan fiddles with it a moment and music fills the room. Charles Aznavour. He shrugs off his blazer and drapes it on the back of her desk chair, unbuttons the top two buttons of his shirt and rolls up his sleeves.

"Don't make yourself too comfortable," Blair says.

Dan looks around the room pointedly and Blair sees it like he sees it: neat and un-lived-in. "Same to you," he says.

Again, she asks, "What are you doing here?"

Dan gives her one of his looks, like she's being ridiculous. "I wanted to see you."

Blair crosses her arms, looking away. Her eyes land on the iPod. "Why did you put this on? You hate this."

Dan shrugs. "You like it."

"Don't assume you know what I like, Humphrey."

"I don't have to assume," Dan says.

"You're infuriating."

"You're easy to infuriate." He studies her for a long moment while she refuses to make eye contact. "Are you still angry?"

Voice hard, she says, "No."

He turns more fully towards her and tucks his hands in his pockets, tilting his head and asking with an almost scientific playfulness, "Do you still love me?"

Blair doesn't say anything, eyes narrowed in a glare.

"Order me a drink," Dan says. "An old-fashioned."

Her frown deepens. That's just like him. She orders it for him anyway and gets herself a gin and tonic. She sits on the edge of her bed to wait, hands folded together too tight. Dan sits in the desk chair opposite, an easy sprawl, fingers tapping against the arm.

"How long are you going to stay here?"

"That's none of your business," Blair says.

Dan half-rolls his eyes. "It's just a question. You're oversensitive."

"Stop telling me what I am," she says.

He looks around the room, eyes traveling over the ceiling and walls and furniture. "Don't you think it's time you came home?"

Blair shrugs.

"You're quite the conversationalist these days."

"I didn't invite you here," she starts to snap, but there's a knock at the door. They both turn towards it; Blair gets up first, Dan a moment later. He leans against the doorway between rooms while she thanks the waiter, who sets the drinks down and then exits. She's so conscious of Dan watching her that she gulps half her drink without thinking. She feels parched.

He steps up silently beside her, shoulders and spine relaxed. She looks at his hand as he picks up the glass, doing it the wrong way of course: he grasps it with all five fingertips from the very top and tilts it against his mouth for a precarious sip, ice clinking. When he sets it down again, there are five half-moon fingerprints around the rim.

"Are you running away from me?" Dan asks, voice soft, because he always cut right to the chase.

"I thought I already did," Blair says.

He's amused. There's no outward sign of it, but Blair can tell. He abandons his drink and turns towards the window. "You ought to say something nice, for once. It's been a very long time."

"Is 'leave me alone' nice enough?"

"We're just worried about you."

Blair tenses just that little bit more. "We?"

Dan gives her a look like he knows what she's thinking, and raises one eyebrow. "Everyone. We just want you to come home."

 _Stop saying we_ , she thinks. "You always want the impossible."

His gaze slides over her from her bun to her mouth to her chest and lower. "Don't I know it," he says.

Blair goes ever so slightly pink. She finishes the drink and watches Dan watch her throat as she swallows, feeling flushed.

This is why she doesn't like to invite him up.

"Blair," he says, the soft thoughtful sound of it tilting up into a question, and that's enough. That's enough, and Blair is kissing him, his mouth opening against hers in some surprise even as his arms go around her.

They move back towards the bed and Dan lands on it first, his hands going under her skirt to peel her panties down her thighs, pressing his mouth to her ribs through the fabric of her dress. She kicks her underwear away but then tugs him to standing again, dropping into his vacated seat as her fingers fall to his belt buckle.

Dan's shirt is tucked into his trousers and he unbuttons it to the waistband, Blair leaning up to place her mouth against his warm skin. "Have you slept with anyone?" she murmurs. She leaves behind lipstick traces.

Dan is trying to get his arms out of his sleeves but he pauses to look at her. "No," he says slowly. "Have you?"

Blair looks up at him for a long moment. Dan raises an eyebrow. Finally, she says, "No."

His other eyebrow arches up. "That was a long pause," he observes. Then, after a pause of his own, "I guess it doesn't really matter."

"No it doesn't," Blair agrees, and reaches up to yank him down, both of them tumbling back against the bed. Dan kisses her like he's starving and touches her the same way he picked up the glass, with the very tips of his fingers. She imagines he leaves visible prints behind on her too.

"What are these bruises?" Dan says. His lips are on her bare shoulder, the exposed underside of her arm. She'd forgotten.

"What?"

"These bruises," he says again, putting his mouth to them, one by one.

Blair doesn't say anything, nudging his head back up for a kiss that he returns easily, though she can sense his hesitation. He pulls back slightly to look at her before dipping down for another quick kiss, his eyes inscrutable and dark.

It makes Blair feel things she promised herself she wouldn't. "Whatever happens in the end," she says, "I don't want to lose you as my friend."

Dan is still just looking at her, one curl falling forward across his forehead. "I promise," he says softly, and hope rises in her, quickly crushed, "I will never be your friend. No matter what. Ever."

Blair bites her bottom lip, feeling her lashes tangle damply when she blinks.

He says, "If we fuck I'm gonna feel like shit tomorrow."

"That's okay with me," she says. They kiss again, Dan's skin against her dress, the weight of him slight and reassuring. There's something to be said for the way they fit together this way. Her lip caught between his, she gasps, says, "You know I never hurt you on purpose."

Dan is unreadable sometimes. His expression is blank. "I don't care," he says, and then he kisses her.

They don't have sex but they do sleep together, Blair curled around his naked back. Her cool silk warms to his temperature and she wakes to the imprint of her eyeliner on his shoulder blade. She shuts her eyes and goes back to sleep.

The next time she wakes up, he's dressed and peering out her window again. There's an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear and he's wearing gray and white stripes. "Blair," he says, the same tone he'd used the night before, "What the fuck is going on?"

She sits up, her hair feeling frayed and messy, her face surely a mess. She doesn't answer.

"How long have you had this hotel room?" he says.

"I don't know," Blair says, not because she doesn't know but because she doesn't owe him any answers.

"More than a week?"

"More than a week."

"More than a month?"

"More than a month."

"How long are you going to stay?"

"I don't know," Blair says. "How long are _you_ going to stay?"

Dan looks at his shoes, those same ugly brown ones he's always worn as long as she's known him, and then back out the window. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

He puts his skinny black blazer back on, and a pair of dark shades; Blair wears a short dark pink dress that clings too close. Her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, they walk down gray streets with a coffee each like they used to a million years ago and share one cigarette between them.  



End file.
